Hallo-ween: Hello tears.

In Dutch, Hallo means hello, and ween is an (old) word for “cry”. (I cry because something sad happened. The verb “crying” is “wenen” . Ween also looks like weeën, with an extra e, and which means contractions (as in, a pregnant woman being in labour).So a bit of creativity with the words, and it says: Hello tears. Or hello painfull spasms?

Anyway, it both can be applied to my first tries in making a halloween card.

I wanted a fairy scene which is brutally disturbed by evil. Or a normally fairylike scene with some sinister twists. I have unicorn stamps, and I thought of the pretty pure white of the unicorn. Do you know the movie The Dark Crystal, with a young (and not yet arrogant and strange religion worshipper) Tom Cruise? If I rememberd right, they tried to corrupt the unicorn.

This was my first theme, a corrupted unicorn. Lured into a trap by evil, having to kill and loose it’s innocense. Covered in blood, delirious with rage it traples all in it’s path. On the card I wanted to show a unicorn that is battling bats, with the light being clear before it, but turning dark with eerie faces behind it. Evil oozes from it’s skin now.

Default colours for evil are usually black and purple, so those colours where my starting points.

You’re wondering, no pictures yet? That’s right, because I want to tell the story first, as it’s prettier then the card.

I loved the background I made. Instead of cutting it to size like I planned, I left it, with the frays of dark shadows still lingering. I ripped the end of the card (which I did with each layer on that end) to give it a torn look. Left side of the card is still good, right side is not right.

I stamped bats (It’s one of the few halloween type stamps I’ve got, from the Chocolate Baroque steampunk Butterfly sheet, (the unicorn is also from Chocolate Baroque) and partially embossed the card (putting the card in the embossing folder which was a bit inked up, and press really hard with a heavy thing on the folder on the place you want the embossing. I think I used my salt-rock lamp for that. I used the Spellbinders M-bossabilities folder Twigs and Tweets.

The ugliness came when I used glow in the dark embossing powder on it for the first time. Then, as it was ruined anyway, I tried a special effect with a skull stamp and placed that on the card as well.

Here it is in pictures:

A mask for the moon and a mask for the unicorn, and very inky fingers. See the swirls on the right? I kind of loved the look.

Blood…

I was making a crunchy blooded bat. The other bat was made out of regular cardstock, this bat was made out of tissue paper and richly embossed with black embossing powder. And then drowned drenched in blood.

So far so good. It was missing something though. So I though, hey! Let’s use this glow in the dark embossing powder! (I had ordered a skull stamp from De stempelwinkel which I wanted to stamp behind the unicorn, like skulls floating in that dark cloud behind it). But before I show you that, I show you the card on which it would be matted.

Beter. Lovely grunge look. Too bad I am going to cover it up.

I added some blood in the bloddy spots, and darkened some parts even more.

I wanted to add a bit of a bright colour into the mix, so I took tissue paper and used the other Halloween colour: orange.

Somwhere before or after this I used the glow in the dark powder on the unicorn and moon. I wanted to simulate moonlight falling on it’s nose and back. I didn’t take into account the shading or fading of the light.

A good view of the left looking floating skull.

Here is the finished card. The tissue paper isn’t glued down, but the effect is not what I hoped, it had to look a bit more wild. I guess I should have torn it instead of cutting it.The skulls were a bit bigger then I thought, so no room for several skulls.

You can sort of see the special effect of the skull here allready: One skull, the red and black embossed one, is looking to the left, while the glow in the dark one is staring at you. Embossing both wasn’t a good idea, as it melts together a bit.

EEEK! See what I mean about the gradient / fading? If only I had drawn smaller lines…

Do you know what I’ve just realized? My workname for this project was “The Nightmare”. Well, isn’t this kind of like a nightmare for crafters, to have a good idea, and a possible good card, but which is ruined because of something stupid you nearing the finishing of the card?

My next project with the Glow in the dark powder turned out lots better! Check back the next few days for that post.

I hope you this posts was helpfull to you in preventing you from making the same mistake. Happy crafting!

Maybe – but it’s very much not what I had in mind when I used the glow in the dark! I had something.. I don’t know… a lot less blunt (regarding the unicorn) in mind. I did make it as a card even after the failed glow in the dark, as I did like the rest. It’s kind of simple, with not many small frilly things on it. Rough and dark. So in that way, the bick bold line of the glow in the dark matches indeed.

All I have to say is #1 your a woot to read! I was cracking up! I too remember when Tom Cruise was human. #2 Your background is pretty awesome! 🙂 I often have these moments myself when the vision in my head didn’t actually translate to my card …

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Hello, welcome to my blog! I am...
Debbie (nickname Daqa); the partner of a wonderful man; mother of 3 kids (2011, 2013, 2014); sister; aunt; Dutch; dog and cat lover; gamer (or should I say geek?); IT-consultant living in Bunde, Zuid-Limburg, The Netherlands. I love to try out different crafts, but mostly, I like to make paper things.

My blog is about crafting, and my life and things I find interesting. (pictures I've taken, events in my life and things or ideas I find worth thinking about). I hope you enjoy reading my blog! Still want to know more about me and my blog? Click the image!

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